Charlie Sheen stretches as an actor to play a womanizing, self-absorbed jerk with substance abuse issues in “A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.”

This dispiritingly stupid vanity project represents Sheen’s first lead role in a theatrical film that hasn’t gone straight to video in the US since the last century. And his first movie gig since the meltdown that ended his run as TV’s top-paid performer on “Two and a Half Men,’’ which was followed by an equally self-destructive tour as a stand-up comedian.

This particular fiasco was written and directed by his pal Roman Coppola, son of Francis Ford and an Oscar nominee for the sublime “Moonrise Kingdom,’’ which he co-wrote with his longtime collaborator, director Wes Anderson.

It seems safe to predict nobody is going to be Oscar-nominated for this new movie, which is sort of like Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz’’ minus the music, the wit and the insight, not to mention Roy Scheider’s brilliant performance.

Charlie plays the title character, Charles, a swaggering 1970s graphic designer who goes into an emotional tailspin when his beautiful live-in girlfriend (Katheryn Winnick) leaves in a huff after finding a drawer full of pornographic shots of her many predecessors.

A Jewfro-wearing Jason Schwartzman (the director’s cousin) plays Charlie’s wacky rock-singer best bud; Patricia Arquette is his hippie-ish sister, a novelist manquée; and Bill Murray contributes what amounts to a glorified cameo as Charles’ long-suffering business manager.

But basically, this is all Charlie (both of them) all the time, as Coppola offers up a series of the character’s surreal fantasies — all art-directed within an inch of their lives (not a bad thing) — while Charlie struggles with a creative block.

Among other things, there’s a bevy of bikini-clad “Indians,’’ a funeral service conducted by “the secret society of ball busters’’ and a “best bulls – – t award’’ presented to our hero by “the academy of sexy women.’’

If nothing else, Sheen has become an expert at playing variations on himself, whether on “Two and a Half Men” or his amusingly self-aggrandizing cameo in the otherwise forgettable “Wall Street 2.”

“A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III” is so feeble it fails even as train-wreck exploitation. I’d be unkind, but not entirely inaccurate, to label Coppola’s sophomoric, er, sophomore effort as a director an offer you can refuse.